That is a cool deal right there....I hope you come up with something good. Are you still thinking that "the smell" is created from the dough rather than a secret "smelly" cheese?Also, is there a metal "agitator" bar that goes into the beaker and is then magnetized to the vibrating base you put it on? Jus try'in to visualize how that thing works....thanks.

Bob - I don't know the source of "the smell" lol, but I figure I should exhaust the yeast as a possibility since I have the ability to do so. The yeast hog is pretty neat. If you look at the picture with the funnel and no liquid, you'll see the stir bar. It's basically a nylon coated magnet that sits in the flask. The little base plate is a stir plate that RebelBrewer started selling from someone who make them at home. It's actually a little fan with supermagnets glued to the blades 180 degrees from one another. It's cheap but it works! Not a bad deal <$60 and if you're into brewing all the better.

Lager yeast is a little lazy to grow. The Bohemian pastorianus strain doesn't really settle out of solution like the previous lager one I tried. It's been going for 3 days now and although the solution is cloudy, the cells are not clumpy. It smells great. Similar to the other lager strains I have tried. So I don't think it's anything too special. I was thinking the other day what if the smell is a combination of things? Perhaps the fresh yeast, burning cheese in the oven, multiple cheeses as others have suggested, cheese powder in the dough... It could really be a combination of things. As for the taste in the crust directly, that's something more approachable because you're tasting the flavor directly IN the crust. Not just some flavor that hits you when you walk in the restaurant. I have the Vermont cheese powder and sourdough flavoring on the way from KA. If I get enough cells from the yeast, I'll use it. If not I am content using the dry lager yeast spiked with some ADY for volume. It's a lot easier working with the dry yeast.

I spoke to a VP, Sales at Lallemand/American Yeast this week. He stated that Lallemand Eagle yeast is indeed the decendant of Budweiser yeast and is regularly either the #1 or #2 selling commercial bakers yeast. Dawn Foods is a major distributor and he recommended contacting them directly to see if they'll sell to the public in small batches or identify some local bakers willing to resell. My next task is to hunt down a brick or two. Let me know if anyone has a local source in the Kansas City area, or by internet seller. Thanks.

Don't know "how" relevant it is, but my earliest ad for Shakey's, Sacramento mentions only one beer and its Black Bavarian beer.

Our menu also claimed Black Bavarian Beer at the Rockville Shakey's in the 70's. It was actually Michelob Dark in a keg. Other than that I think we served regular Michelob on tap and had a couple import bottle brands.

Tonight I finally had a chance to bake two pies using the cheese powder from the Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner package I wrote about on March 26th. I put in about 5 teaspoons to a pound of flour. While this powder did add flavor to the crust, it also acted as a dough conditioner. The dough was quite slack after fermenting. Unfortunately, it did not yield THAT SMELL*.

For reasons I will explain later, I sprinkled some cinnamon onto the second skin. As expected, one could smell cinnamon in the kitchen after about 7 minutes. But, the crust had hints of cinnamon, not THAT SMELL*.

I note that King Arthur also sells Pizza Dough Flavor (item 1043). You can read the ingredients statement on their website. It contains cheddar cheese powder plus quite a few other ingredients, including the infamous "natural flavor". I looked at this product a long time ago, but decided against buying it because it contained flavors I knew were not in Shakey's crust. But the 132 reviews for this product form a springboard for discussion for what gives Shakey's crust its unique smell and taste. One recent reviewer wrote, "I noticed a difference by using this product. The aroma in my kitchen is to die for...just like a real pizzeria. I got a more noticeable flavour when making foccacia with no sauce than your typical all dressed type of pizzas, which is the main reason that I purchased this product."

I bring this up because a few days ago I took 1/3 of one the Shakey's pepperoni pies pictured here out of the freezer:http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,518.msg173916.html#msg173916These were wrapped in Heavy Duty aluminum foil, then overwrapped with plastic wrap. I was amazed that after all this time it still had THAT SMELL*. It had notes of wine, plus other smells I just could not place. I learned one valuable lesson from this: stick with plain cheese pies when procuring samples.

After reheating them (I reheat from the frozen state at 400 degrees for 10 minutes) I obtained THAT SMELL*. I noted a hint of cinnamon. But, others had used cinnamon in the kitchen recently. That is the reason for sprinkling cinnamon on one of the skins today. But cinnamon does not seem to be a component of THAT SMELL*.

I was very disappointed with myself that, here, I had samples (from a corporate Shakey's restaurant) in my hand but could not place the source of the aroma and taste. I now believe that if all the people who work on this project get together in one place with samples of the current version of the Shakey's pizza they are attempting to clone, this mystery will be solved.

Another problem is that I have not been able to procure a mozzarella like used on current corporate Shakey's pies. The cheese is obviously a blend that includes stinky cheeses. But this cheese, when reheated, remains very soft and pliable. I think it may have to do with the fact that these pizzas are formulated for the lunch buffet. This cheese has a much longer holding time than even Grande whole milk mozzarella, the best cheese we used so far. The only thing we found close to Shakey's cheese was the pizza cheese used by the Golden Corral buffet restaurant chain. Raw cheese samples were obtained by taking a baked potato to the pizza maker and requesting some cheese for the potato. The cheese readily melted, but was very wet.

One question repeatedly asked by Lightmeter is "What would Shakey have done?". Unfortunately, I draw a blank. No one so far has assured us that the pizza made by Shakey in 1954 was the same as that made in the 70's by franchisees nationwide. We don't know if and when any food scientists got involved.

EDITED to correct reheating oven temperature.

* THAT SMELL is a trademark of DNA Dan for a smell that is real but its source is unknown.

I saw a Dawn Foods 18-wheeler shortly after taking this picture the other day of the site of the old Shakey's Rockville. The general contractor is Florida based. The workers were from a concrete contractor. I guess the Dawn Foods truck was not delivering anything to the job site.

It's glad to know I'm not crazy. *THATSMELL is real and does exist, it's just an unknown source. This sort of feels like an episode of LOST the TV show.

A couple of updates: The pastorianus strain grows very lazy. I could tell fermentation was occuring because of the smell and bubble being produced, but the strain took 3 days to saturate a 1L flask. Also the cells do not clump at all. The mixture was turbid, so I let it settle overnight, decanted most of the liquid then poured out the cells with the last bit of liquid. It smells like a really good lager. I will make some dough tonight with some ADY as a spike in for volume.

I have some Vermont cheese powder on the way to try that next. Was hoping to run the comparison side by side with the yeast experiment.

In a third approach, I am trying to take a more simple tact. First off, would the recipe be some exotic crazy thing that Sherwood had purchased? Would he have teams of food scientists to develop a flavor profile? In both cases I think not. So reading the obituary here: http://groups.google.com/group/ba.food/msg/a27c389a592c9096

I closed in on the comments "They later added pizza, using a recipe Mr. Johnson knew from his childhood, some of which he spent serving as a recipe interpreter between Italian housewives and his mother, who was Swedish." And began searching for "swedish pizza recipes". That led me to this: http://www.food.com/recipe/Swedish-Pizza-137196 which has some very interesting "stinky" cheeses. Also notice the correlation that the crust is a "puff pastry" dough. Perhaps some "traditional" pizza in sweden served as the influence for Shakey's. It's a stretch, but the secret may lie in the influences? My father (who grew up in a strict italian house) told me stories about some businesses in the family that would purposely burn romano, or parm cheeses by throwing a dash into an oven to bring people in off the streets. Another good one is to cook some butter and garlic. Just some thoughts....

The little gray cells were working overnight and brought back memories of articles of 10-15 years ago about forms of non-leavening yeast being added as a flavoring agent to all kinds of foods including pet foods. I have still have to research this site to see what has been written on this subject and I may wind up striking over this paragraph as a dead end. But autolyzed yeast and other kinds of yeast for flavoring may tie in with Dan's initial post in the malty laminated beer crust thread:http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13389.msg132548.html#msg132548Much of this stuff can't be found in the grocery store. I remember back in the 60's or 70's Squibb made brewers yeast tablets for use as a vitamin supplement. The yeast was debittered and otherwise processed to make it taste like candy. While my old school doctor prescribed it as a vitamin, I overdosed because it tasted so good.

I didn't even know this was possible. I wonder how "cheesy" it tastes. At any rate, all these yeast extract products going into breads is simply glutathione and glutamate derivatives. A more popular commercial one is MSG. They are trying to enhance flavors this way.

I bought some Marmite yeast extract in the supermarket, imported from the UK. I mixed some in with some dough in the fridge and baked it. While it is way off from Shakey's, it does stink up the kitchen. The problem is that besides yeast extract, this product contains vegetable and spice extracts. Ok well, onto the Marmite website for recipes to use the rest of it up ith. But it taught me a valuable lesson: Whatever I am smelling in Shakey's I have not worked with before. Otherwise, I would recognize the smell.

I tried the scandinavian version which goes by the name Cenovis. Similar results as you.

I just ate the S. Pastorianus pie compared to a pie made with a Canadian lager. Although they tasted slightly different, the taste was not "super WOW" crazy different. All the lagers seem to taste pretty similar. I must say however I do prefer the lagers over the ale yeasts. This must be why I am drawn to the malt liquor.

Still on the hunt. My damn cheese powder won't be here until next week.

Vermont Cheese Powder Results: Look somewhere else. Not the magic ingredient. The pizza tasted worse than my typical pies made with malt liquor. Not much "stinky cheese" smell coming out of the conveyor. The crust tasted a little bland actually. I could taste the toppings and pizza cheese more because the crust tasted almost "absent". Structure was really good, lots of puff in the crust. I brought the sheeter up a bit in thickness, which I think I like better. Probably hit this one with too much top heat, but still working out the nuiances of the conveyor.

I didn't weight this skin so I am not sure of the actual TF. I just used by typical 1/8" setting on my sheeter, but kept it 1 tooth on the thicker side. If you had to guess I would say 3/16" is about right.

Tonight I finally baked a pie made with all the ingredients listed on the bag by several posters here. A friendly chemistry major supplied me with some laboratory grade (not fertilizer grade!) ammonium sulfate. I again went for the gusto, putting in 1/3 teaspoon to a pound of flour and the usual other ingredients. I did use fresh yeast, so will repeat the experiment with other yeasts. The product behaved as a dough conditioner. The first thing I noticed in the bread machine while mixing the dough is the dough became slack. Then, the dough would not rise at room temperature and there was no gas in the plastic bag. Not much else happened after being in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Letting it come to room temperature, the dough was very slack and rolled out very easily.

While baking it there was no THAT SMELL(TM)*. The dough came out limp; the slices did not stick straight out while holding the slices.

I overdosed to see what would happen. Next time I will try within the recommended range.

I have been spending some time studying the efforts of people seeking to determine what causes the stink in Subway hero breads while it is baking. Some of these people live in an apartment above a Subway sandwich shop and complain this stink gets into their clothes. When was the last time someone complained of smell getting into ones clothes from a French bakery downstairs run by a guy just off the plane from Paris? This mental exercise may lend some insight into Shakey's smell.

The secrets of the old Shakey's in Rockville, MD will soon be concreted over. A new restaurant, with a larger footprint than the Shakey's it replaces, has the walls going up, though there still is dirt in the center of the structure.

Is that the original store? Sad to see these icons get plowed and re-developed. When I was in Palo Alto, CA a while back we drove by one of the original Round Table stores. Alas it was redeveloped into condos.

No, Rockville, Maryland was not the original store. However, it was where thread contributor Lightmeter used to work. According to Lightmeter, that store was one of the highest grossing stores in the chain. There are also a lot of references on the web to that particular location, though there were a dozen or so stores in the metropolitan Washington, DC area at the chain's peak.

The original Shakey's was at 5641 J Street in Sacramento, California. I was there once in the mid-80's. They still had a jazz band performing that day.

The website of the current restaurant on the site:http://www.clarkscornerbar.com/I don't know how much of the structure is original. There was a fire on the site which led to the closure of that particular Shakeys.

I have been spending some time studying the efforts of people seeking to determine what causes the stink in Subway hero breads while it is baking. Some of these people live in an apartment above a Subway sandwich shop and complain this stink gets into their clothes.

When I was out walking all over New England (350 miles) last fall, living out of a backpack, I would regularly stop at Subway to fill my water bottle with ice. As a result, my water bottle often had that smell, and the water tasted of that smell. I got really sick of it, but I had to deal with it because in a lot of small towns Subway is the only place you can easily get water.

Disclaimer: Don't necessarily believe anything I say here. My brain ain't quite right anymore (unless it is). If I come off as rude or argumentative, that's probably not my intention. Rather, that's just me being honest, to myself and everyone else; partly because I don't have enough time left to BS either you or myself. If you are offended by anything I say, it's probably because you think lying to people (to be "polite") is a good idea. I don't.

Greetings, Sorry for the long absence. Work and life got in the way again...

After reviewing the more recent Shakey's threads I note "That Smell" is still an elusive ingredient. It seems DNA Dan went down a couple paths exploring various yeasts and some sort of vermont cheese powder.

Have you tried validating that the smell/taste is simply a shaker cheese mix dusted on top of the mozz cheese blend, just before putting it into the oven (I still think this is the elusive aroma)?

If you already did and posted about it, I'm sorry I missed it, but I'd be interested in your results. I recomnmend store bought Kraft "Shredded Parmesan, Romano and Asiago Cheeses" with the built in shaker lid. It smells close to me.